Telecoms.com

Google’s SVP of Products, Sundar Pichai, confirmed in his speech at MWC that the OTT giant is in advanced testing of its floating cellular network, consisting of inflatable balloons and lightweight solar-powered planes. Projects “Loon” and “Titan”, respectively, are in the early phases of testing, but Pichai believes the two projects will provide a portable “mesh of floating cell towers”. He also confirmed the long-anticipated rumour that Google is looking to launch an MVNO in the US.

Telefónica told Telecoms.com at MWC 2015 it is en route to transforming itself into a ‘digital telco’. As part of this strategy, the firm is working with Mozilla developing Firefox Hello, a browser-to-browser video communications service.

NFV was grandiosely unveiled at last year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and was rapidly heralded in as the next-big-thing for carrier networking. This year, multiple pledges have been made by exhibitors to demonstrate the power of an NFV-enabled architecture, with showcases expected to run all week by some of the industry’s largest players, which aim to show the tech’s move towards commercial readiness.

Enterprise communications solutions provider Mitel has confirmed it plans to acquire communications network software vendor Mavenir, after entering a definitive merger agreement. The agreement will see Mitel acquire all outstanding shares of Mavenir common stock in a cash and stock deal valued at approximately $560 million.

Operators see video content streaming as one of the most lucrative LTE services, according to the Telecoms.com Intelligence Annual Industry Survey 2015. However, the report results also showed telcos still see OTT service providers as a significant competitive concern.

AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have all denounced the FCC’s net neutrality ruling, which saw a reclassification of broadband as a telecoms service under Title II. All three were staunch in their opposition to the ruling, releasing official statements declaring their disagreement, while the threat of future litigation looms due to the narrow majority of the vote. […]

According to research by Ofcom, almost one in three (32%) broadband connections in the UK are superfast, up from approximately one in four in November 2013. The regulator said increasing take-up of superfast, 30Mbps or above, cable and fibre services has increased the country’s average broadband speed by a fifth in the last six months to 22.8Mbps.

Some of the world’s leading operators are uniting with rich communication services (RCS) vendor Jibe at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona. IP video calling, group chat and sharing will be demonstrated based on platforms developed by Jibe, in sync with RCS specifications laid out by the GSMA.

Huawei has made a host of announcements ahead of Mobile World Congress 2015, offering a peek at its LTE-connected smartband and unveiling plans for a commercialised 4.5G technology next year. These were unveiled as part of the firm’s digital transformation strategy dubbed ROADS (real-time, on-demand, all-online, DIY and social) at an event in London, attended by Telecoms.com.

Lycamobile, the international low-cost calling MVNO, said it will soon be releasing a communications app for its growing international customer base. Speaking to telecoms.com, CEO Chris Tooley hinted the app will be in the same vein as global OTT communications services like Whatsapp and Viber.

Following last week’s revelations claiming SIM card giant Gemalto’s mobile SIM card encryption keys were hacked by US and UK security services, the firm has said its own investigation into the matter shows a breach probably did happen. However, apparently only its office network was intruded and the attack could not have led to a massive encryption key theft as originally suggested by the report last week.

Opera Software has announced the App Pass, which is designed to give mobile subscribers free-of-charge access to selected apps for a set period of time. As a feature of Opera Max, an app designed for mobile data saving and management, the App Pass is targeted at emerging markets to encourage more mobile data usage.

Ericsson has announced a partnership with Bridge Alliance under which it will deploy its Device Connection Platform (DCP), designed for the management of IoT, for the industry group’s 36 operators across Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

Telekom Austria has announced its Serbian subsidiary Vip mobile has demonstrated what it claimed is the world’s first fully virtualised stack in a commercial network. The telco said the trial is part of its overall technology strategy towards network functions virtualisation (NFV).

Telecom Italia has announced it is planning to buy out its media division of which it already owns 78%. The telco said the incorporation of Telecom Italia Media (TI Media), which has been publicly traded for over a decade, has been approved by board members on the basis of simplifying and rationalising the group structure.

Intelligence agents from the UK and US hacked international SIM card giant Gemalto’s computers and stole encryption keys that protect the privacy of billions of mobile phones across the world, a report in the Intercept has claimed. The publication said it received top secret documents containing the information from the US National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Nokia has announced it will be demonstrating ‘future’ 5G technologies for the IoT at Mobile World Congress 2015. The first expected commercial deployments of the yet-to-be-standardised technology may be five years from now but the Finnish kit maker was keen to emphasise its 5G and IoT agenda.

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) has announced the launch of an open source software community and code repository aimed at consolidating and accelerating development efforts around software and solutions that take advantage of software defined networking.

Ofcom has launched a consultation to determine whether the recently agreed extended mobile coverage obligations should affect operators’ annual spectrum licence fees. Under the new rules, which shifted Ofcom’s historical focus from population to geographical coverage, operators are obliged to reach 90% of UK landmass each by the end of 2017.

Austrian incumbent Telekom Austria, has announced the completion of its in-depth trialling of virtualized customer premises equipment (vCPE), integrating SDN technology with virtual network functions (VNFs) through a common service and network orchestration platform from multiple vendors. NEC and NetCracker were among the main contributors to the development of the project.

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